


Teenage Dreams

by GTRWTW



Series: The Publican's Confession Box [6]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Dirty Thoughts, F/M, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Original Character(s), Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29584620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTRWTW/pseuds/GTRWTW
Summary: Robin tells the story of a night out when she was younger, and allows herself to daydream a little.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Series: The Publican's Confession Box [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149110
Comments: 27
Kudos: 54





	Teenage Dreams

A great roar went up as England took the lead; the pub was bouncing around them. Strike and Robin raised their glasses to toast the footballers' prowess, both enjoying the atmosphere but neither feeling the need to actually watch the match. 

Strike felt that his view was much better: his partner, curvaceous and beautiful, bright blonde and smiling, sitting across from him drinking her wine. She was still dressed as she had been for the day's undercover work in an upscale fashion house: a ruffled white shirt tucked into high-waisted trousers that covered her to her ribs, pointed leather boots, and a hairstyle that dragged her fringe back into a small bouffant, the rest of her golden tresses draped artfully around her shoulders. Strike was, admittedly, struggling to think straight.

"You know what I miss? Nights out," effused Robin. She sipped her wine, aware that she'd already had more than she'd planned to, but enjoying herself too much to care.

"What do you call this, then?" asked Strike, amused.

"No, this is brilliant, but you know, proper nights out. The kind you have when you're eighteen. I don't know if I'd have the energy for them any more, but God, they were fun." Robin smiled, and Strike felt a sudden urge to book a taxi for later in the evening, to take them to a nightclub.

"I didn't really have many of those kinds of nights," said Strike.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I went to pubs a lot. I didn't really do the clubbing thing much. And then I joined the army when I was twenty. I only really -" he stopped abruptly, a sly grin appearing on his face.

"Go on!" encouraged Robin, glass in hand.

"I only went to clubs to pull. Or to be wingman for someone else wanting to pull."

Strike shrugged and drank. He felt a little guilty, but a small, rational part of his mind told him that he had nothing to be embarrassed about. Indeed, Robin looked almost gleeful at his admission, and he could tell that she would listen, enthralled, if he were to venture more details. He considered it; would it be cruel to attempt to find out her feelings this way? Goodness knew he needed to find out somehow. But before he could decide how to proceed, Robin spoke.

"I'm a great wingman. Wingwoman. I used to do it for my mates all the time. I was - well, I was already attached, as you know -" Robin took a sip of wine, looking furtive, "- so I was the one who had to help the rest out."

"What does being a wingwoman involve, then?" asked Strike, a cheeky smile playing around his lips.

"Well, how does being a wingman work?"

"It's probably quite different for blokes, to be honest," admitted Strike.

"Do I want to know?" 

"Probably not." His eyes twinkled as he smiled at her, and despite the ridiculous subject matter, Robin felt her stomach flip.

"Well, for me it was mainly just making friends with their friends. A guy's more likely to stick around if his mates are making friends with a group of girls, so I'd be the one to do that. Pretend I was bolshy, chat them up, that kind of thing," she said, shrugging.

"I'd have liked to see that," murmured Strike, and Robin threw him a look. He was drinking his beer with a nonchalant air, and Robin couldn't read him.

"There was one time I bombed, though," ventured Robin. "I don't take full responsibility, because my friend Maria was completely pissed and didn't give me a fair warning," she said, giggling at the memory.

"And you weren't pissed?" said Strike, his eyebrow quirking up. Robin giggled some more, and butterflies fluttered in Strike's belly.

"I was, a bit, but not as much as her. It was just before I left for uni; I was nearly 19. We were supposed to be out in Harrogate, but there'd been a mix up and another mate said she wasn't coming. Maria and I were both local, so there was no point going all the way to Harrogate, but we already had the taxi booked. Maria thought it'd be fun to just go in the opposite direction, and see what we could find.

"So we ended up at this place called JT's Bar. It looked like… one of those student type places, you know. Posters on the walls, bare brick, that kind of thing. Maria had brought a bottle of vodka in the taxi with us, and we were swigging from it all the way. She had a lot more than I did."

"Wait - did you say JT's?"

"Yeah, why?"

"And this was how far from Masham?"

"I don't know, we were in the taxi… about twenty minutes?"

"That's in Catterick," he said, smiling at the connection. "I was there, mid-2002 until the end of 2003. I had a load of problems with this staff sergeant who decided to throw rookies straight into interviewing abused -" He caught himself. "Sorry. Let's just say he didn't know his arse from his elbow."

Robin shook her head good-naturedly. She could well imagine the kind of thing Strike might have said, and why he might then have had problems. She was, however, quite certain that he would have been right, and the thought made her smile. 

"Sorry, you were saying… you'd never been there before?"

"No. Maria said she thought she recognised it, but it was obvious she didn't. We were the only girls in the place, tarted up to the nines, faces painted like… I don't know what. Makeup wasn't the same back then. Nowadays kids learn all the proper techniques from YouTube, but we had to just wing it. I used to wear bright green eyeliner sometimes."

Robin laughed at the memory and Strike smiled along with her, but he couldn't imagine anything inherently wrong with green eyeliner. Perhaps it was brighter than Robin's usual makeup, but he could see it looking good on her. Green suited her.

"Anyway, there were all these men, buzz cuts everywhere…"

"Go figure," quipped Strike.

"Yeah, I didn't make the connection, but maybe I should have. Anyway, my friend walked straight up to this one bloke and told him that he looked like an old boyfriend of hers. He did that line where he said she looked like a new girlfriend. His mate rolled his eyes so hard I thought they might fall out the back of his head," Robin laughed. 

Strike stared at her, frozen, his pint forgotten half way to his mouth. 

"This mate… was he wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt?"

"I don't know, what would that look like?"

"You don't know the… you must know the bloody Rolling Stones logo! That red mouth with its tongue sticking out," said Strike incredulously.

"Oh, of course," said Robin, laughing.

"Well, was he?"

"I think so… you don't mean to tell me -"

Strike laughed out loud. "Yeah, that was me. Fucking hell," he finished under his breath. Robin's eyes were wide as saucers as she digested this.

"But - your hair - and you were -" she broke off, blushing, and her eyes flicked from his chest to his biceps and then guiltily back up to his eyes.

"Fit? Yeah, I was a fucking soldier, Robin," he said dryly. He was still smiling, though, and Robin grinned back. "I was boxing as well, and I hadn't broken my nose yet."

"Hair?"

"Not quite a buzz cut, but pretty close. And…" he hesitated, took a drink.

"And what?"

Strike looked her in the eye and gave an embarrassed grin. "Hair gel."

"Cormoran Strike, you did not use hair gel!" Robin collapsed into peals of laughter, gripping her wine glass, clutching her side.

"Well, it could have been worse. I could have been into batwing sleeves and fake tan," he replied.

Robin squealed with renewed laughter; she'd entered into the perpetual state where laughs built on laughs, and tiny tears escaped the outer corners of her eyes. She took a deep breath and sipped her wine, pink in the face and enjoying herself like she never had before.

"Oh my goodness… I'd forgotten I used to do that. It was one of those gradual creams, I think my mum would have killed me if I'd used the proper stuff. I can't believe you remembered that," she added, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Well, good memory," said Strike.

"What else do you remember?"

"Well, you looked… a bit lost. You were so young, and you were definitely the only women in there. I watched a younger bloke chat you up," he added, remembering the smarmy trainee and his loud, braying attempts to impress the cool nineteen-year-olds who'd wandered in. The Robin in Strike's memory had been carefully polite but detached, and when scanning the bar for an exit route, had met Strike's eyes for one blistering second.

Strike didn't intend to admit it to his Robin, sitting in the pub opposite him, but in that delicate moment Strike had felt as though he'd known the young woman for a long time but had only just been reminded of their acquaintance. At the time he'd shaken the feeling off, told himself that she was far too young and therefore off limits, and he'd carefully steered the smarmy young man into conversation with him and his friends. The women had left the bar together, smiling and chatting, looking for all the world like age and scars and disappointment would never happen to them; the entire universe was at their sequin-sandalled feet.

Strike pondered the difference between the young Robin and the woman across from him. She had never lost the clear stare of those beautiful eyes, but the woman beside him now had a sense of passion that Strike was sure the teenage version of her had not possessed. He couldn't help comparing; he preferred the shade of her skin now, her natural colouring giving her pale cheeks a rosy glow whenever he smiled at her; he preferred the generous curve of her hips, as much as he might try to avert his eyes from them as she walked ahead of him up the office stairs. He raised his face to hers, and she was watching him silently. He wondered whether she was thinking of the young trainee who'd chatted her up that night, or perhaps the sarcastic mate who'd rolled his eyes.

But Robin's thoughts were far more immediate: she had transposed what she remembered about the eye-rolling sergeant onto Strike's form in front of her. His hands and his jaw were still as strong. Perhaps his air of danger was better concealed these days, but it was still there; she'd seen it. She was suddenly sure that he could switch it back on at will, and she wondered whether he conveyed that same aura of forcefulness in the bedroom. She felt a throb of something she was embarrassed to acknowledge, even to herself.

"What was your training like?" she asked innocently.

Strike looked surprised, but happily launched into an explanation of basic training in the British Army. Robin sat back in her chair and watched him gesticulate, sipping her wine and shifting in her seat as she indulged herself in imagining him donning his uniform once more, but for her eyes only.


End file.
